The Generosity of Women - Hardcover

"The Generosity of Women is wonderful, dramatic, comic, deeply felt and possessed of a beauty that is both quotidian and rare."?Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica

"Courtney Eldridge is one of the most interesting young writers I've read in years. The Generosity of Women is a lovely and difficult book that rewards its readers page after page. A stunning novel."-- Frederick Barthelme, author of Elroy Nights

Meet:

Joyce, the foul-mouthed, controversial and wildly successful curator of a controversial art exhibit on surveillance, who unexpectedly finds herself under surveillance--in her own bedroom.

Her best friend, Bobbie, a gynecologist -- driven, poised and in control -- a woman who finally finds love at 50-something and watches, horrified, as her perfectly ordered world crumbles around her.

Bobbie's patient, Lisa, a former juvenile offender and habitual runaway, who once dreamed of fame working as Joyce's gallery assistant, and is now struggling with her new identity as banker's wife and doting mother.

Lisa's sister, Lynne, a middle-aged suburban mother whose penchant for home decorating conceals her troubled marriage and blinding desire to exact revenge for a childhood injustice.

Jordan, Lynne's 16-year-old daughter, a former straight-A student and aspiring model, who, no longer fitting in at school or home, takes a part-time job at a super market to spite her mother, and finds a close confidante in her thirty-year-old, male boss.

And finally, meet Adela, Bobbie's beautiful 23-year-old daughter -- and Joyce's goddaughter -- who has returned to New York for a long weekend under the guise of meeting her mother's new boyfriend, but has a bomb of her own to drop.

You will see these women at their best and worst--as loving and hateful, vengeful and vulnerable, hilarious and heartbroken. But mostly, they are simply six very real women, any of who could be your mother, daughter, sister or friend. They are women who you already know and who, over the course of five days, will divulge their secrets to you until the pieces of their story fit together and the whole picture is unveiled with all its intricacies, shocks and joys.